Karl Marx: Anthropologist (Respond to this article at http://www.therai.org.uk/at/debate)

Marx was not only a philosopher, but he was very much and anthropologist of his day. Here, the author describes Marx's work in terms of four key concepts, namely, nature, society, history and science, and considers how anthropologists at the time influenced Marx in his thinking.     

#spanishrevolution (Respond to this article at http://www.therai.org.uk/at/debate)

The article reports on the street protests that took over Spanish cities earlier in May and June. The protests have been explained as a response on the part of new media democratic networks to the governance of the economic crises by corrupt political and financial classes. We offer here a tentative chronology of the events, and essay instead an argument about a revitalised municipalist tradition, that sees in the plaza the centrepiece of new forms of do‐it‐yourself political action.     

Writing development (Respond to this article at http://www.therai.org.uk/at/debate)

Development professionals spend a lot of time writing and the aid industry has a vast production of texts. The author argues here that anthropology of development needs to look anew at how these texts are being produced, circulated and the purposes they serve. I have briefly identified six features of development writing: 1. Institutional ownership, 2. multiple authorship, 3. impersonal style, 4. terminology, 5. Communicable simplifications and 6. temporality. The more general point is to call for a more sophisticated engagement with development texts. There might be more going on in these documents than immediately meets the eye. More than anything else, these texts grant legitimacy and presence to the actors involved in development. Writing development is more about the production process, the language and what it ultimately bring in terms of aid flows, rather than the substance of the text itself.     

Charity plus (Respond to this article at http://www.therai.org.uk/at/debate)

This editorial takes to task a statement on humanitarianism by Valerie Amos, UN Under‐Secretary‐General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator, which seems to gloss over issues to do with staff selection and management policies, but especially the work of veteran anthropologists in the field of development and alternative perspectives on humanitarianism.     

Imperative Eurasia (Respond to this article at http://www.therai.org.uk/at/debate)

The end of the Cold War marked the apogee of Western global domination, but this has since come under increasing threat, notably through the rise of China. To preserve the values of European social democracy, it makes more sense to negotiate new rules of political economy with multiple centres of power across Eurasia than to plunge deeper into a free trade zone with North America. Current European institutions are unable to respond to this new challenge; nor are the institutions of sociocultural anthropology in Europe conducive to a balanced, historically informed perspective on the super‐continent, Eurasia.     

Confucius institutes (Respond to this article at http://www.therai.org.uk/at/debate)

Many hundreds Confucius Institutes have mushroomed in higher education centres all over the world. In this comment, Marshall Sahlins continues his analysis of troublesome aspects of these institutions and considers what anthropologists have come up with in terms of research on these so far. He also touches on the Canadian campaign for university teachers to boycott these. James Turk commends Marshall Sahlins for looking into the issue of academic freedom in relation to Confucius Institutes. This is part of a campaign by the Canadian Association of University Teachers to secure academic freedom where universities enter into collaboration with third parties.     

Economic deviance (Respond to this article at http://www.therai.org.uk/at/debate)

Making sense of what went wrong during the recent financial crises requires us to go beyond the conventional view of deviance. We need a more systematic and social view of financial deviance, and have long had the intellectual tools to do so. They include Durkheim and Merton's work, invoked here to pose pertinent questions about the deviant behaviour of corporations and institutions.     

The Olympic legacy: Feeding London (Respond to this article at http://www.therai.org.uk/at/debate)

Over the last decades, the Olympic Games have increasingly claimed to deliver a social and economic ‘legacy’ to the host city. The 2012 Olympic Games in London have set out to deliver a legacy of better food for east London, an area perceived as ‘deprived’, with higher than average rates of obesity and significant ‘food deserts’ in its midst. Various Olympic organizations have considered the issue, resulting in the publication of a Food vision for the first time ever in Olympic history. However, with companies such as Coca‐Cola and McDonald's having been appointed official suppliers to the Games, and with an extremely limited time frame, will the Games be able to deliver on this promise?     

Talking to strangers (Respond to this article at http://www.therai.org.uk/at/debate)

The language used by politicians and its social effects have been of long‐standing interest to social anthropology. Opinion‐formers on both sides of the North Atlantic have recently argued that this language can inflame tensions and reinforce divisions. In the UK, the discussion has centred on relations between a white majority and a Muslim minority, while in the US, in the aftermath of the attempted assassination of a Democratic Congresswoman in Arizona, it has focused on the risk of political language provoking violence. The antidote to inflammatory language is often assumed to be moderation, defined as a (self‐) disciplined engagement with divided publics. Drawing on the insights of Danielle Allen's Talking to strangers, here I suggest that moderation might be re‐imagined, not as a vague commitment to centrism and the ‘middle ground’, but as a powerful resource for citizens and communities to challenge the ideological excesses of politics, religion and the market in the twenty‐first century.     

Scapegoating in Burma (Respond to this article at http://www.therai.org.uk/at/debate)

This guest editorial considers the attacks on the Rohingyas and Muslims in the wake of liberalization in Burma.     

Scientology's winning streak (Respond to this article at http://www.therai.org.uk/at/debate)

In this editorial the author considers the effect of recent legal judgments enabling Scientology weddings in England.     

A thousand Nagdis (Respond to this article at http://www.therai.org.uk/at/debate)

A tributary of the Banas, the Nagdi River flows through the old market town of Jahazpur in Bhilwara District, Rajasthan. Unlike India's major sacred waterways such as the Ganga and the Yamuna which have the status of goddesses, the Nagdi was never deified. However, it figures in Jahazpur's origin legend, reaching back to the epic Mahabharata. Due to a complex convergence of conditions unique to this place but resonant with ecological tragedies the world over, the Nagdi's flow has dwindled and its waters are badly polluted. Everyone in Jahazpur with whom the authors spoke during fieldwork in 2010–11 mourned the end of their river. Once proud of the Nagdi's beauty and miraculous properties, Jahazpur residents were aware of having lost an important part of their environmental and cultural heritage. This article explores the complex causalities of the Nagdi's deterioration and emergent possibilities for its restoration.     

The Anansi position (Respond to this article at http://www.therai.org.uk/at/debate)

At least since the left‐wing critique of positivism and the radical student movement some decades ago, it has been a fairly widespread view that anthropology and the other social sciences should be engaged. Habermas even wrote, in 1968, that the social sciences have an intrinsic ‘emancipatory knowledge interest’. This article is sympathetic to this view, but argues that an engaged anthropology is at its most efficacious when it refuses to take part in a polarized discourse with fixed positions. Instead, anthropological interventions in the broader public sphere should take on the role of Anansi, the trickster of West African folklore, whose unpredictable and surprising moves enable him to confound and defeat far more powerful adversaries. Using examples largely from the Norwegian public sphere, where anthropologists are visible and active, it is shown how anthropology can simultaneously be both destabilizing, subversive, critical and liberating, precisely when the anthropologist takes on the liminal trickster role; neither fully inside nor fully outside.     

Back to civilization (Respond to this article at http://www.therai.org.uk/at/debate)

This editorial reinforces recent calls for anthropologists to participate more actively in multidisciplinary reappraisals of the concept of civilization. Beyond the dominant relativist model of discrete cultures and historical accounts of complex trading networks across the Eurasian landmass, it is important to recognize the civilizational coagulations that sustained such networks. The challenge is how to explain the dogged persistence of civilizational boundaries in the face of continuous contacts between them, accelerated by modern means of communication.     

Making a Killing (Respond to this article at http://www.therai.org.uk/at/debate)

In this editorial Gusterson critiques anthropologists' writing on US gun culture and suggests a different way of making the case for gun control.